MarCom 2009 - New, Exciting, Educational

As a Marketing Communications professional, I am always looking for creative ways to communicate with our current and potential customers. Over the last 13 years that I have been in this profession, I have seen many methods and vehicles used by Cadence and various other companies to reach out to external and internal audiences. I must say that some of the things I have seen have been pretty creative and unique. Last year we got together and came up with a unique way of our own to communicate with our current and potential customers. You see, we were about to launch a very unique product and wanted to make things more exciting for visitors to learn and get educated.

We launched Encounter Digital Implementation (EDI) system last December. We had all the basic materials developed and ready for distribution - web, printed collateral, internal content, PR activities, etc. However, we needed an extra kick to better communicate with our audience. We came up with what you see on the site now. Interactive presentations and reference materials are available for each of the topics in EDI System; after each material is reviewed, visitors take a quiz and beomce certified in a specific topic. Visitors don't have to stop there; they can get up to 5 certificates and enter to win cool prizes. Since its launch 1000s of folks have visited and participtaed in the web-based training and communication program. We have had 5 monthly winners and 1 grand prize winner. I was able to ask some of the winners about their expereinces going through the program and here is what they had to say:

"This campaign is really good and helpful to understand the Cadence Encounter Digital Implementation System. I like the way of representation of the tool capabilities in the form of quizzes supported by the very informative video lectures and PDF reference materials. So many different aspects are integrated in a single platform is really very helpful for the designers. I like the whole campaign very much and very informative. I am thankful to you for taking such innovative steps and wish you all success."

Thanx and Regards,
Jai Prakash Sharma
(January winner)

"I thought the training process was great, and very convenient. Some modules I did at home sipping a beer and some from work (not sipping beer).  I could start and stop as I took various interrupts and rewind the module as necessary.

The reference guides were useful when taking the quiz and reinforcing some ideas that were presented that I was unclear about. I don’t think the presentations were the cause of my unclarity but rather me taking interrupts during the presentation and the quantity of information presented. I will refer to the documents again when I need to since now that I know where they are and what they are about.

I will point my piers and managers to this website. And as time goes on, hopefully, everyone will understand the effort required to produce a low-power, mixed-signal, small-geometry device and that there is a methodology that can cover the new design hurdles."

Rich Harwood
(February winner)

There is still time to participate and learn about EDI System - and win prizes!  I encourage you to give this a try and let me know your thoughts. You never know, you may win a prize or two at the same time. Looking forward to hearing from you,

Soheil Modirzadeh
Sr. MarCom Manager
Digital IC Design, Logic Design, Low Power